Tanzania Hidden Treasures- Its Seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Mount Kilimanjaro National Park is located at Northern Tanzania, near the town of Moshi, 128 km (80 miles) from Arusha about one hour’s drive from Kilimanjaro airport. Mount Kilimanjaro includes the highest peak in Africa and this has made it a popular tourist destination since its opening in 1977. Kilimanjaro was formed over 1 million years ago by volcanic movement along the Rift Valley. Three points – Shira, Kibo and Mawenzi came to be about 750,000 years ago. The highest point is Uhuru Peak on Kibo, which is one of the Seven Summits of the world. The Seven Summits are a list of mountains that are the highest on their continent.
This is an ideal mountain climbing site and getting to the summit of this snow-capped mountain after a week long climb is a huge achievement that forever remains engrained in the minds of mountain climbing enthusiasts.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area has a large permanent concentration of wild animals found in the huge and perfect crater of Ngorongoro. Nearby, the crater of Empakaai, filled by a deep lake, and the active volcano of Oldonyo Lenga can be seen. Excavations carried out in the Olduvai Gorge, not far from there, have resulted in the discovery of one of our more distant ancestors, Homo habilis. Laitoli Site, which also lies within the area, is one of the main localities of early hominid footprints, dating back 3.6 million years.
Serengeti National Park borders Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Park. Its far-reaching plains of endless grass, tinged with the twisted shadows of acacia trees, have made it the quintessential image of a wild and untarnished Africa. Its large stone kopjes are home to rich ecosystems, and the sheer magnitude and scale of life that the plains support is staggering. Large prides of lions laze easily in the long grasses, plentiful families of elephants feed on acacia bark and trump to each other across the plains, and giraffes, gazelles, monkeys, eland, and the whole range of African wildlife is in awe-inspiring numbers.
It would be a grave oversight to fail to mention that Serengeti National park is acclaimed for the great Wildebeest migration where an army of dust raising animals makes the seasonal journey of searching for fresh pasture to the north, then to the south after the bi annual rains.
The Konoa Rock Art Site on the eastern slopes of the Masai escarpment bordering the Great Rift Valley are natural rock shelters, overhanging slabs of sedimentary rocks fragmented by rift faults, whose vertical planes have been used for rock paintings for at least two millennia. The spectacular collection of images from over 150 shelters over 2,336 km2, many with high artistic value, displays sequences that provide a unique testimony to the changing socio-economic base of the area from hunter-gatherer to agro-pastoralist, and the beliefs and ideas associated with the different societies. Some of the shelters are still considered to have ritual associations with the people who live nearby, reflecting their beliefs, rituals and cosmological traditions.
Zanzibar was one of the most prominent Swahili trading towns in the Indian Ocean trade. The Zanzibar Stone Town is found in the cultural heart of Zanzibar. It has remained virtually unchanged over the last 200 years. The narrow streets and winding alleyways are lined with grand houses bespeak Arabic culture. According to UNESCO, Zanzibar had great role to play in the flourishing and suppression of slavery, it was one of the main slave-trading ports along the east African coast in East Africa and also later on was used as the headquarters from which its opponents such as David Livingstone conducted their anti slavery campaign.
Kilwa Kisiwani was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. This is an archaeological site situated on an island off the Swahili coast of Tanzania. It flourished as a huge trade center between AD 1100-1853, primarily due to its convenient location between the Arabian Peninsula, the Far East and the Indian subcontinent.
Selous Game Reserve is the star of the southern safari circuit. The reserve is named after the intrepid Fredrick Courtney Selous, a celebrated Victoria era explorer and naturalist. He met his end here in a sideshow of the First World War. The Great War had spilled over from Europe as the Germans then ruled parts of today’s Tanzania. Located 500 km to the southwest of Dar es Salaam, the reserve occupies a staggering 55,000 sq km – larger than Switzerland- and is the largest of its kind in Africa.
The Selous Game reserve attained a World Heritage Site status in 1982 due to its considerable significant flora and fauna. This reserve has a myriad of habitats like the savanna woodlands, swamps, open grasslands and forests.
The Selous has over 2,100 species of tress and plants recorded. The Rufiji River flows silently and is the life line of the reserve. It has plenty of tributaries and oxbow lakes, convenient for boat safaris. The reserve is home to a variety of wildlife like the buffalo, hippo, black rhino, lion and wild dog. Elephants in the reserve are estimated to number a whooping 60,000.
This reserve is also home to other animals such as bush back, waterbuck, reedbuck, impala, eland, giraffe, baboon, zebra, and greater kudu. Bird lovers will tremendously enjoy the trip to Selous. There are over 420 known species. Ruaha and Selous are large game sanctuaries that contain so much to see. It is advised to spend at least 3-4 days in a sanctuary. Photographic safaris can be very rewarding here, with so much to offer you just keep clicking away. Most visitors eventually end up in the Stiegler’s Gorge, which happens to be favorite leopards prowling territory.